"Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other, and I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen *anything* to make me believe that there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. 'Cause no mystical energy field controls *my* destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense."
As Peter King might say... True words, Han Solo. Lofty words.
We all love Seahawk Addicts. Damn, I genuflect before them daily, kneel before Zod, all that jazz. But this one bugged me. I commented over there, but I felt I needed to tease this out to a whole post of my own...
The main point of that post is an argument that the Seahawks franchise is "cursed." Nothing makes me roll my eyes and starting making a wanking motion more than when someone rolls out the "WE'RE CURSED!" argument. Why?
1. There's no such thing as curses, y'all. As Penn & Teller might say, the whole concept is BULLSHIT. Maybe it's because I'm not religious, maybe it's because I've had over a decade of training in critical thinking crammed into my brainpan... but show me the cause and effect relationship between a "curse" and any event. I'll wait... Nothing? Yeah, that's what I thought. Seriously, how is a curse supposed to work, Spooky Mulder? Dude, if you actually think curses are real, you probably also think there's value in astrology...
2. The all-time best example of a sports curse? The Curse of the Bambino, right? The Boston Red Sox were cursed because they sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees, and didn't win a World Series for 86 years. But wait! They "broke" the curse in 2004, and on top of that, they won AGAIN in 2007. In fact, they are probably the best MLB team of this decade. The thing is, THERE NEVER WAS A CURSE. If there was some iron clad mystical curse laid on the Red Sox by the gods, did it have a fucking expiration date? Fuck no! Because that's STOOPID.
The Red Sox finally won because they had excellent starting and relief pitching in the postseason, coupled with a bunch of mother fuckers beating the shit out of the ball. The Cubs will win when they get better players. There's no curse, it's not Bartman's fault, and on and on and on.
The Seahawks? Where is the evidence that the team is "cursed?" What is the source of the curse? Who laid it upon us? At least people built a whole back story around the Red Sox and Cubs "curses."
You might point out Super Bowl XL (grrr). The awful officiating in XL wasn't a curse. It was a group of seven cowards intimidated by a very unusually partisan Super Bowl crowd. Take that one variable out of the equation (Leavy and his wussy minions), and we aren't even having this idiotic discussion. We'd have a Lombardi Trophy sitting in the lobby of the VMAC, and no one would be blathering about a "curse."
Apart from the Knox and Holmgren eras, Seattle simply hasn't been a very well-run team. The stars didn't align to keep the mediocre 1990s teams out of the playoffs. They just weren't very good. I'm sure the expansion years were fun with the fake field goals and Zorn running around like a 3rd grader with a sparkler, but they never had the talent to compete for a Super Bowl.
3. If you believe that curses control the destiny of sports teams, WHY DO YOU ROOT FOR THEM???? If you really think that your team has no chance to win because they are cursed, following them is an utter and complete waste of time. Everything is predestined, predetermined... scripted. You may as well go watch the WWE if you believe in sports curses.
4. The bottom line? Believing in curses is a way intellectually lazy people explain things they don't understand. Smarten up. and once again, don't give up on your team because of a bad news day in August. Cripes.